Google Launches Email Service

• By theWHIR.com , April 01, 2004

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April 1, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Search engine Google (google.com) announced today that it is testing a preview release of Gmail (gmail.google.com), a free Webmail service that will give users up to eight billion bits of storage information, the equivalent of 500,000 pages of email.

Gmail, with 1GB of storage space, would easily outdistance the capacities offered by Yahoo (yahoo.com) and Microsoft's (microsoft.com) Hotmail services, which offer 4MB and 2MB of storage capacity respectively with their free accounts. The two companies charge their users for extra storage capacity.

Larry Page, co-founder of Google and president of the products division, said Gmail was inspired by the complaints of users, who found Microsoft and Yahoo's storage capacity far too limited and asked Google to come up with something better.

"If a Google user has a problem with email, well, so do we," said Sergey Brin, co-founder and president of technology at Google. "And while developing Gmail was a bit more complicated than we anticipated, we're pleased to be able to offer it to the user who asked for it."

According to the company, Gmail will be built on Google search technology. For example, integrating Google will allow users to search their entire log of emails, improving the efficiency of overall email management. Google says many other features of Gmail will incorporate Google technology.

Although Google is not charging for the large volume of storage space, reports say that the company is planning to implement targeted advertising with the Gmail service in the hopes of generating additional revenues. Under this scheme, Google has programmed its computers to search the content of email messages, delivering ads that are related to that content. Google says it will closely guard the content of email messages, but privacy concerns are likely to be raised.

Today's news comes as Google continues to position itself to battle Microsoft and Yahoo for Web supremacy. In February, Google updated its index, increasing the total number of indexed items to 6 billion. That announcement came just as Yahoo was set to announce that it was dropping Google search technology from its Internet properties. Microsoft is also developing its own search technology. The software giant was reportedly interested in a potential merger with Google, engaging in some discussions last October. The talks however, did not achieve any results.

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